The invention relates to a sputter target comprising a carrier body and a target material arranged on the carrier body, wherein the carrier body has a rear surface facing away from the target material and the target material has a front surface facing away from the carrier body.
Sputter targets often have the disadvantage that the material is sputtered non-uniformly, so that the material to be sputtered has already been consumed at some positions of the sputter target, while sufficient sputter material is still present at other positions. Therefore, the originally present sputter material is often not utilized optimally. In practice, it is often attempted to achieve a more uniform abrasion through a readjustment of the magnetic systems in the sputtering installations or through the application of additional magnetic systems, in order to achieve higher sputtering rates. Such systems are described, for example, in German published patent application DE 103 36 422 A1. European patent application publication EP 1 063 679 A1 takes a different approach. Here, sheet-metal strips are integrated into the magnetic system underneath the sputter target. Similar approaches are described in German published patent application DE 196 22 606 A1.
Japanese patent application publication JP 2003138372 A describes another approach for increasing the sputtering rates. Here, the thickness of the sputter material is varied across the surface area of the sputter target. A reduced thickness of the sputter material allows the penetration of the magnetic field through the magnetic sputter material. Additional planar sputter targets are known from Japanese patent application publication JP 1147063 A. Here, magnetic strips are embedded in the base plate of the sputter target, so that ring-shaped abrasion patterns are generated, whereby concentric peaks and valleys alternate for the shown, wedge-shaped target plates.